Mata Hari
Mata Hari, born Margareta Gertrud Zelle, is an Assamite spy. Biography Margareta Gertrud Zelle was born in Holland during the late 19th century CE. Daughter of a Dutch shopkeeper and his Javanese wife, she was thrown out of teaching school for having an affair with the headmaster. At 18, she married a Dutch naval officer and moved to the Dutch East Indies with him, bearing him two children before divorcing him in 1905. She then relocated to Paris, taking the name Mata Hari ("Eye of Dawn") and the identity of a Javanese princess, debuting as an erotic dancer. During the Great War, French intelligence agents recruited Mata Hari to spy on the German crown prince, with whom she was personally acquainted through her dancing. However, during her journey to Germany via Spain and Holland, her ship was stopped and she was interrogated by British officials. The British warned her that her mission was compromised and that she should return to Spain. Upon doing so, she entered into an affair with the German military attaché to Spain. When her lover tired of the affair, he betrayed her to the French by sending a message to Berlin praising her value as a double agent, using a code that he knew the Allies had cracked. Mata Hari was arrested upon her return to France in January 1917. Despite the lack of direct evidence against her, French and British counterintelligence agents had amassed sufficient circumstantial evidence to conduct a closed court-martial. She was found guilty and sentenced to death. The night before her execution, she received a visitor in her cell: a distinguished Turkish officer whom she knew from her performances at the Oriental Studies Museum in Paris. He confessed that he had been smitten with her from the first night he saw her and that such beauty should not be wasted by mere mortal authorities. When she stood before the firing squad at dawn, she refused a blindfold and blew the men a kiss before they fred. Other soldiers, ghouls of her sire, hastened her fallen form away before the sun could fully rise over the walls of the prison. Since that night, Mata Hari has been one of the Vizier's most valued spies within Cainite society, feeding the clan information on the most sensitive affairs of immortals across the globe. The talents that life never gave her a chance to develop have blossomed fully in death, and she is now one of the most adept infiltrators in Kindred world. A mistress of disguise and improvisation, she has a score of identities within the Camarilla, the Sabbat, and various independent clans and sects. One of her many faces holds the princedom of a city in the American Midwest, while another leads a Black Hand pack in Chile, and a third enjoyed a brief stint on the Red List before her "destruction". All sides of the Assamite Schism claim Mata Hari as a loyal member, and all of them may be correct. Trivia For the historical figure, see . Gallery Vtes_mata_hari.jpg|''Mata Hari'' VTES card. Art by Steve Prescott References * Category:Assamite Category:Vampires of unknown generation Category:Vampire: The Masquerade character Category:Historical character (WOD)